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Technical Devices

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The frozen wastes of Alaska are littered with prewar iron that still thinks, shoots, and guards nations that vanished long ago. Technical devices are the turrets, drones, and panels that a techie can turn to their own side, seize from the enemy, and crack open with an electronic tool. This article is about what you can actually do with them.

Two families of devices

There are two distinct categories of “tech” in the game, and you shouldn’t confuse them:

  • Deployable kits — items you craft, carry with you, and deploy into a turret or drone right on the spot.
  • Technical panels — stationary objects on the map (terminals, computers, circuit boxes) that you use to open a door or shut down someone else’s security.

Both systems work without randomness: either you have enough technical training and bypass points — and the action goes through — or you’re refused without spending anything. There are no luck rolls here.

Your own turrets and drones

Combat tech is built from crafting recipes — each one requires the Mechanics skill at the needed threshold, a Tool set, and the matching components (boards, batteries, metal, weapon parts). Deploying consumes the kit only if your engineering network is developed to the required tier; otherwise the item stays in your inventory.

  • Light turret kit — deploys a temporary allied light portable turret in hold-position mode. It stays put and covers a sector.
  • Scout drone kit — a reconnaissance drone that follows you.
  • Combat drone kit — a combat drone, which also follows its owner (requires two tiers of the engineering network at once).
  • Override spike — a single-use tool applied to an enemy technical creature to seize an enemy turret or drone under your command.
  • Command relay — the same thing, but a reusable seizing tool.

It’s important to understand the limit: deployed devices are temporary helpers, not permanent companions. They die when their owner leaves the map or dies. One of each kind is active at a time (turret, scout drone, combat drone); if you deploy a second of the same kind, the previous one is removed once the new one appears. Developing the engineering network raises the cap on simultaneously active devices.

On the map, devices are tagged with short badges: TUR / SCT / DRN — that’s the kind (turret, scout, drone), while CMD means your device, OWN means someone else’s controlled unit, and OVR means a neutral target you can hijack.

Technical panels

Panels are objects on the map labeled PNL, TERM, CIRC, or COMP. You interact with them directly or apply a tool to them. Right now there are three working types in the game:

  • Door circuit panel — cracking it opens and throws wide the electronic locks tied to it. This is the legitimate way to get past an electronic door without picking the lock itself.
  • Security terminal — shuts down nearby ownerless turrets and drones (the ones nobody controls) within a set radius. Your own deployed or seized devices stay safe in the process — a great way to clear a field of prewar turrets.
  • Maintenance circuit box — a simple service box with low bypass difficulty.

How to crack a panel

Bypassing a panel is a comparison of numbers. You need to gather at least as many bypass points as the panel’s difficulty. Points add up from an electronic lockpick plus the Electro probe and Circuit bypass abilities from the Mechanics skill.

Current panels require specifically an electronic tool: you can’t crack a panel with bare hands, and an ordinary mechanical lockpick won’t do. A successful bypass switches the panel to the “cracked” state (this is saved), spends the tool if needed, and unlocks the linked locks or jams the ownerless tech.

Feedback arrives as personal pop-up labels — just for you:

  • DONE — the panel is cracked (or was already cracked);
  • PROBE — an electronic tool is needed, bare hands won’t do;
  • TOOL — the wrong type of tool;
  • LOW — your bypass points fall short of the difficulty.

The game doesn’t show you the exact difficulty number or the required tool — you only see the verdict.

Where it all comes from in the world

The lore explains why the wastes are crawling with self-governing guns. First-generation autonomous turrets were created back in the 2000s and 2010s by two superpowers as a replacement for armed guards: an armored tower with heavy-caliber machine guns and a friend-or-foe identification system that told personnel logged into memory apart from intruders. Self-propelled defense systems — miniature machines with no permanent operator — added pathfinding and communications to that, and by the start of the USSR–USA standoff they were being deployed in places like Alaska and Chukotka.

The nuclear war of 2022 and the cooling that followed knocked out most of the devices, but some survivor cities restored the prewar “guardians” — albeit without automatic reloading or fire suppression. That’s why even today, in 2052, near surviving military sites and protective shelters you still run into silent turrets and combat machines, still dutifully killing outsiders for nations that no longer exist. This is exactly the tech you jam with a security terminal or seize with a spike.